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Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door – that way Lumbergh can’t see me.

The other day I was having a conversation about cloud applications (SaaS) and how it relates to businesses and the ability for them to make their organization more efficient, or to offer new services for their customers. It was at that point that I learned about an organization that has a perfect cloud application that not only makes total sense but impacts a good chunk of Canadian employees in all sectors.

ADP is a well loved company in Canada. Why? Well, because it’s the happy logo you see when you used to receive your paycheques (it’s technically still there in electronic format for those of us with autodeposit). ADP has a great solution to help organizations handle the entire HR and payroll process from beginning to end all in a modular cloud offering. It’s really just another example of how cloud can be applied to just about every business process in some form or another. After all, when you think about it, information such as attendance can be easily centralized through a SaaS application. From a customer standpoint it means that information can be automated and transmitted much easier through electronic formats as opposed to traditional methods such as punch clocks (do they still use these?). Not only is the information more accurate, but it saves lots of work that would normally be required to manage each time card. Imagine if you had a large factory, this process would take considerable time to ensure accuracy.

From a pure business perspective, you could use this centralized data to obtain better analytics through using Big Data solutions. This means you could identify trends (is an employee chronically late on certain days) and verify the accuracy of information (is someone punching in for a colleague).

And honestly, it makes sense to consolidate this process to a payroll service provider. They could easily integrate these data streams into their services to make the whole reporting and payroll process much more efficient. It is honestly another reminder that cloud really has little to do with technologies and more about using technology as a way to streamline business processes.